


Love is Love and Love Hurts (Yes, that includes platonic love)

by Hamiltalian



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Best Friends, Blood and Injury, Friendship, Gen, Hanahaki Disease, Other, Platonic Anxiety | Virgil Sanders & Deceit | Janus Sanders, Platonic Relationships, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 04:13:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26346907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hamiltalian/pseuds/Hamiltalian
Summary: Janus and his friend had a falling out, but Janus has missed him every day since he left. And it's manifested itself in the form of Hanahaki disease.
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders & Deceit | Janus Sanders
Comments: 1
Kudos: 58





	Love is Love and Love Hurts (Yes, that includes platonic love)

There was an incredibly popular misconception about Hanahaki disease. Most people believed that it could only come from unrequited romantic love, but it wasn’t unheard of for a platonic or even a familial love to cause the disease. After all, love is love. The issue wasn’t that romantic love was so much stronger that only it could cause the disease because that simply isn’t true. The issue was that, for a lot of people, it felt so much easier to pursue and to build a platonic love. Society didn’t place the same kind of value in platonic love that it did romantic love, so many people were taught to believe that platonic love simply wasn’t as important. There was no pressure to treat it as important. 

If anybody could argue that that was a lie, it was anybody who knew Janus Anwir. He’d fairly recently had a falling out with his lifelong friend, Virgil Sanders, and, honestly, he wasn’t sure whose fault it was. Virgil had went over one day to bother his cousin, Thomas, and was quickly adopted by his friend group. Janus had insisted that Virgil wouldn’t be happy with them, that he would be forced into a persona that he wouldn’t enjoy. After all, some of them very obviously kept their own feelings to themselves and Virgil had trouble talking about how he felt as it was, he thought it was a very rational fear to think that they, at least subconsciously, would want to make Virgil into somebody he wasn’t. Virgil misunderstood and retorted that they actually did like him and eventually said that if Janus was going to act like such a parent, maybe they had no business being friends. 

Ever since then, Janus just felt so much more alone. Of course, Virgil wasn’t his only friend, he had his buddy Remus and the two of them were thick as thieves, but that didn’t mean he didn’t miss Virgil every single day. Sure, he didn’t like to show it, but it was apparently very obvious, as proven by the fact that Remus always asked his brother, a member of Virgil’s little group, how the emo was doing, with the intention of making sure Janus knew he was okay. And he appreciated it, and he appreciated Remus, but it wasn’t the same. Virgil was gone. And he wasn’t coming back. And Janus couldn’t handle it. 

As stubborn as he was, though, he outwardly denied it for years until it became too much for his heart to bear. He denied it as the first few yellow rose petals appeared, always after nights of dreaming about having his friend back. He denied it as he began coughing up small flower buds, claiming it was no problem, that he didn’t really miss Virgil as much as Remus thought he did, it would’ve been pointless when he clearly wanted nothing to do with them. He even denied it as the buds grew into full blooms, with the occasional flower stem coming up and cutting his throat from the inside, coating the petals in his blood. Sure, it stung, but at least Remus seemed to like receiving them as gifts. 

But no matter how many times he denied it, he knew deep down that it was true. He loved his friend too much to bear being away from him for so long. But the sheer amount of physical pain that Janus was feeling was nothing compared to the emotional pain and the last thing he wanted to do was make Virgil feel even a fraction of that by using his sickness to tear him away from his friends. Of course, after all that time that Virgil had spent with his friends and the multiple occasions where they made it evident that they loved Virgil as he was, even if they couldn’t seem to love themselves the same way sometimes, he’d never tear him away, but the way that Virgil glared at Janus anytime he saw him made it pretty evident that Virgil himself would never believe that. So, he just kept it to himself. 

And there was another problem. At least, anybody besides Janus would see it as a problem. Janus may not have believed in society as a concept, but that didn’t mean he was immune to the messed up values that it taught everyone. In his mind, his love for Virgil was just platonic and, therefore, it should’ve been so easy to stop feeling so strongly and get rid of those stupid flowers. He knew he was in pain, he knew this illness was deadly, but he believed that if he just tried hard enough, maybe he could forget about his friend, maybe he could forget about how much he really loved him. Everyone would’ve been happier that way and Virgil wouldn’t have had to hear a thing about it. 

Unfortunately for him, he forgot to calculate in the fact that Remus could not keep a secret to save his life. Or, in this case, Janus’s life. 

As Janus’s illness progressed, he had to turn down Remus’s invitations to hang out more and more frequently and Remus decided to use that to his advantage. So, one day, while his brother had all of his friends over to their shared apartment, Remus strutted into the room, ignoring the shut and locked door to Roman’s bedroom as usual. 

“Remus, you realize the lock means we would like to talk amongst ourselves and only ourselves, right?” 

Remus just shrugged. “You’re not even using the door lock right. If nobody’s having sex or doing anything illegal, then it’s really like the lock doesn’t count. Now, shut up, I’m not here to bother you all, I just need to talk to Virgil.” 

“That sounds like a personal problem,” Virgil said with a shrug, crossing his legs as he sat on top of Roman’s dresser. 

“Virgil, I will use physical force to get you out here. You know for a fact that I would do that.” 

Virgil did know that and it was an annoying fact. He groaned and hopped down from the dresser before following Remus out of the room and to the other bedroom, standing in the doorway. 

“I’m staying here, I’m not going into your room.” 

Remus rolled his eyes, but it was whatever. He didn’t need Virgil in his room, he just needed him to get away from his friends. “You need to talk to Janus.” 

Virgil rolled his eyes and turned to walk away, stopping as Remus grabbed his arm, tightly. “What are you doing? I don’t want to talk to that jerk.” 

Remus let out a stressed laugh. “Virgil, this isn’t the time for you to be the angsty little teenager your soul says your meant to be, this is important and you need to listen to me.” He unconsciously squeezed Virgil’s arm a little tighter, showing him that he actually meant what he said. 

It may have been a long time since the last time he dealt with Remus and a much longer time since the last time he saw Remus being serious, but that still remembered what it was like. It was always kind of unnerving to see Remus being serious, though not for the reasons that people believed. Remus was obsessed with things that other people found genuinely upsetting, he had a taste for gore and a love for misfortune, so if he said something was wrong, something was wrong. 

Virgil yanked his arm away and turned back to face Remus, crossing his arms over his chest. “What is it?” Honestly, part of him was betting on the problem being something Janus did to Remus. He hadn’t been a particularly bad friend back in the day, but the way he freaked out when Virgil so much as insinuated that he wanted to be friends with somebody else wasn’t something he’d been expecting either. 

Remus didn’t want to sugarcoat this, so he got straight to the point. “Virgil... Janus is dying.” 

Virgil scoffed. “No he isn’t. Look, I don’t know if this is, like, some weird, freaky scheme to get me to talk to him or if you think that’s just a funny fucking joke, but either way, I'm not buying it.” 

“Virgil,” Remus repeated, his tone harsher and a bit more urgent. “He’s dying.” He grabbed Virgil’s arm and pulled him back into the doorway before looking for something. 

“No, he isn’t,” Virgil argued, only staying so Remus could leave him alone. 

“Yes, he is.” Remus found what he was looking for, a fairly small, airtight wooden box, and tossed it at Virgil, probably the only person he knew who he could trust to catch it. 

Virgil glanced up at Remus, still highly skeptical, before opening the box, finding that it was almost full of bloodied, yellow roses. Before he could think about it for even a second longer, he slammed the box shut. In his mind, he wanted to shove it back at Remus. What the fuck was he doing, showing him some freaky, bloody roses? But he couldn’t. Instead, he held it tight against his chest, the implications of the flowers swirling through his mind. “So... So, what? Janus freaked out on me because he likes me and he just never told me? That’s not a fucking excuse for trying to keep me from making friends.” 

Remus shook his head and walked back over to him. “He doesn’t love you like that.”

“That’s not what this stupid box of flowers is implying.” Of course Virgil knew, everybody’s parents scared them with the flower disease as children. Whether it was done on purpose to scare their teenagers out of having sex or by proudly talking about how they were so in love that it almost killed one of them before they could get together, everyone’s parents did it. 

Remus would’ve laughed, if he could’ve. “No, it’s implying that he loves you so much that it’s killing him, it doesn’t have to be romantic. You were his best friend, you were more than friends, and he can’t handle losing you, especially not over some stupid fight. I’m not asking you to go, promise to be his best friend forever, and cure him. You’ve made it clear where you stand on that. I just...” 

Remus paused for a second and took a deep breath, pushing back tears. He couldn’t cry. For Janus’s sake, he couldn’t cry. It was one thing if he convinced Virgil to talk to him, it was another thing if Janus thought for even a second that the only reason Virgil agreed to show up was because Remus was crying. Whether it was because Janus believed that Virgil only went because Remus was upset or because he believed he was manipulating Virgil through letting Remus’s hurt feelings speak for him, Janus wouldn’t have been happy. Remus wanted to scream, he wanted to slam Virgil into a wall and yell until he got his point across, he wanted to drag him over to Janus’s house by his stupid bangs and force them into a room himself, but he couldn’t. He wasn't the one dying here, he wasn’t the one who needed the closure. And Remus wasn’t able to fuck it up because he couldn’t be quiet for five minutes. 

“If Janus is going to die, I need to know that I tried to get you to talk. You know what he’s dealing with. I... I can’t help him.” That was probably the hardest thing for Remus to say. To sit there and calmly admit that he was powerless in this situation was more than he could handle, but he had to handle it. Janus was dealing with flowers in his throat and vines in his lungs, Remus could handle being helpless and being calm about it for a little bit. “I just want you to talk to him. If my friend is going to die over some stupid fight, the least I could do is help him finish the conversation that you two started.” 

Virgil looked back up at Remus for a second, scanning his expression. He could tell this was painful for him, not just because his best friend was dying. He could tell that it was killing Remus to stay quiet and, honestly, he was surprised that Remus wasn’t beating the crap out of him yet. Virgil didn’t want Janus to die, no matter how many times his glaring might’ve come off that way. Virgil looked back down at the box in his arms and nodded. “Alright... I’ll talk to him. Let’s go.” 

Remus allowed himself to sigh with relief and felt most of his harsher emotions evaporating away. Things weren’t much better, but he had Virgil and Virgil was going to talk to Janus. That was enough for now. “I’ll grab my keys.” 

Virgil quickly let his friends know that he was leaving with Remus before getting in his car, Remus driving them over to Janus’s apartment and dragging him inside, not even bothering to knock, as usual. Janus gave him a key and Remus was going to use that key. 

“Remus, I told you I’m not feeling well enough to hang out with you,” Janus scolded from the other room as he heard the front door shut. “Look, I promise I’ll make it up to you, but-” He stopped as he came out and saw that Remus wasn’t alone. It felt like so long since the last time he saw Virgil, longer since he could make eye contact without his old friend glaring at him, but there he was, standing right beside Remus and looking back at him with an almost worried expression. 

If Janus missed him before, he couldn’t stand seeing him without wanting to cry now. He wanted nothing more than to run over and snatch Virgil into his arms or go cry at his feet, apologizing for his pig headed behavior and begging for him to be his friend again, but he couldn’t do that. If Virgil wanted to come back, Janus needed for it to be on Virgil’s terms, not his own. 

“Virgil... Hi.” 

“Hi...” Virgil looked at him up and down. “You look like shit.” Even that might’ve been downplaying it. Janus was pale to begin with, but he looked practically gray. His ordinarily shifty eyes looked empty and his posture was drooping in a way that Virgil didn’t even know was possible, not on someone as sophisticated as Janus made himself be. 

Janus just laughed, glad to hear his voice again. “I’ve got this stupid flu. I told Remus that I would hang out with him once I was feeling better, but-” 

“Don't. Don’t do that,” Virgil interrupted. “Don’t lie to me.. Remus already told me the truth. And he showed me the flowers.” 

Janus’s small smile fell and he shook his head. If he couldn’t lie, he could at least explain himself. “It’s not like that.. It’s nothing romantic.” 

“I know..” 

“I’ll be fine, anyways. We just used to be friends and I’m still getting used to not having you around, that’s it. I told Remus I would get over it soon. If you don’t want to hang out, you don’t have to hang out and that’s that. I’m fi-” Janus coughed sharply, immediately proving that he was still lying, and stepped away, not wanting anyone to see as the stupid rose came out of his mouth, thorny stem and all. He massaged his throat once it was out, groaning. It used to hurt a lot more before he just got used to it. 

Virgil went over and put a hand on his back. “You’re not fine. And I’m not here because I feel like I have to be, I’m here because Remus was right, we need to talk about what happened.” No. He was there because he did still care about Janus, no matter what he said, and he didn’t want his friend to just die over a stupid fight. “You need to sit down anyways we might as well sit and talk.” 

Well... Janus couldn’t argue against that. “Fine...” 

Virgil walked back over to the couch with him and sat down, Remus hiding around the corner to give them some space to talk alone. 

“So.. Were you just going to let yourself fucking die? I mean, you’re not stupid, I know you know that you can’t just stop being sick.” 

Janus did know that. “I didn’t want you to feel like you had to come back for me... The way I see it, it’s better that I stay sick and you stay with your friends than I get better and you feel like your forced to stick around because I apparently can’t let myself live without you.” 

“That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said,” Virgil quickly responded. “You die and, then what? I’m sitting here, wishing we could’ve talked through this stupid fight long before it was too late? Janus, I would’ve felt worse than ever!” 

Janus paused for a second. “You wanted to talk it through?..” 

“Of course I wanted to talk it through!” Virgil stood up, unable to contain himself. Remus may have had to control himself, but Virgil was under no such pressure. “You were my best fucking friend and I left on a whim because of a stupid argument! And you let me leave! I said that stupid stuff on a whim, but you were calm and collected as ever and you let me leave! I thought you just...” He calmed down a bit and wrapped his arms around himself, trying not to cry. “I thought you didn’t care about me...” 

Janus looked down at his hands before looking back up at his friend. “Of course I care about you... I wanted to protect you, but when you yelled at me, I thought that you felt so trapped that you needed to leave. You just seemed so happy with them and so angry at me, of course I wasn’t going to try and talk to you again.” 

Virgil knew that. It was why he made such a big show of hating him. He knew what he said was stupid and an exaggeration and he didn’t want to face that truth. He still didn’t, but things were different now. Now, Janus’s life was on the line and all Virgil had to do was get his head out of his ass and be honest with himself for once. “I just felt too stupid after what I did... If I had known that you missed me this much, if I’d known how much it was actually hurting you, I would’ve come back and talked it out with you. I still care about you Janus, so much. You were my best friend then and I want you to be my best friend again. I have for a long time and the fact that it took you almost dying for me to admit it really says a lot more about me than it does about you.” 

Unfortunately, Janus wasn’t sure that he believed that. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Virgil, Virgil wasn’t much of a liar, but what if Virgil was just lying to himself? Janus was right in front of him and he was dying, it wouldn’t have been too much of a stretch to think that Virgil was just talking out of sheer emotion again. 

Virgil realized what he was thinking and felt himself panicking. Here it was, here was his chance to talk to Janus again, to tell the truth and get his friend back and he was so convinced that Virgil hated him that he thought he was lying. “I’m telling the truth. You... You can ask Logan, I used to always talk to him about it. Or Roman! Sometimes I ask him to ask Remus how you’re doing... I fucking miss talking to you, Janus. I really do love you. You’ve been my best friend since we were little kids, I’m not going to let one fight ruin everything and you shouldn’t let one fight kill you! You and I are supposed to be too damn stubborn to die...” 

Janus grabbed Virgil’s hand and pulled him back down onto the couch, looking deep into his eyes for any sign that he was lying, but all he could see was truth behind his tears. “You mean it... You actually mean it.” 

Virgil nodded. “I mean it. And you’re not allowed to die on me.” 

Immediately, Janus began crying so hard that Virgil was scared he was suffocating to death then and there, panicking until his friend pulled him into the tightest hug of his life, which, compared to his friend Patton, was really saying something. 

“I’m sorry!” he sobbed. “I promise I’ll never hurt you again, you're my best friend, Virgil!” 

Remus leaned against the wall and slowly sunk down to the ground, overwhelmed with relief. Ordinarily, he would make a wise crack about how he was there the entire time, but he didn’t have the energy for that right now. Janus was going to be okay.

Virgil rubbed his back, practically hearing the strain from the vines in Janus’s lungs vanishing.

Janus was crying too hard to feel it himself, but it was true. Those stupid plants dissolved away, but it wasn’t what he was focused on right then. Virgil loved him. 

“I know we’ve got some talking to do about what happened, but you seriously need to get some rest,” Virgil said as Janus stopped sobbing for a second. “You’ve been through a lot, you were dying two minutes ago. I’ll be here with you, but you seriously need to eat and rest.” 

Janus just nodded. He was willing to do anything Virgil asked, if it meant he wouldn’t leave again.

Virgil smiled softly. “And we can watch Nightmare Before Christmas again, just like old times.” 

Janus nodded again and sat up, wiping his eyes and trying to calm himself down. “I can’t watch that stupid movie without thinking about you. You’ve been obsessed with it forever.” There were a lot of movies he couldn’t watch without thinking of Virgil, that was just the one that used to hurt him the most. 

“It’s a bomb movie,” Virgil shrugged. 

“I’m going to head out,” Remus said, reappearing from behind the wall. “It looks like you two have this covered for now.” 

“Tell the others I just went home.” His hatred for Janus affected their opinion of him. He didn’t want to have to explain why they were hanging out now. 

“Will do.” Remus waved one more time before leaving, shutting the door behind him. 

Janus sighed and watched Virgil as he went around, presumably getting snacks for their movie. “If we ever fight again and I don’t try to talk to you after, I’m giving you full permission to kick my ass.” 

Virgil laughed at that. “Noted. Same goes for you, don’t let me be that stupid again.” 

“Got it,” Janus laughed. It felt so good to laugh with him again. And if Janus ever lost him as a friend again, he wasn’t sure what he’d do. He loved him too much. 


End file.
